Managing Risk in Alpine Climbing and… Product?
These days I have the luxury of spending a little more time planning outdoor adventures, this time a month long alpine climbing circuit in the American Alps outside Seattle this summer. Yes, very exciting!
As I plan these trips, it occurred to me that for years now I’ve been learning about my day job as a PM from a very-not-day-job-place — Alpine Climbing.
One of those lessons is about the role of risk in decision making — from deciding on the way in a total white out to determining a… go-to-market strategy?
What is “risk” anyway? ‘A situation involving exposure to danger’ (Thanks, OED)
The relationship of climbing and risk isn’t new — even just being on a mountain is a situation, and harsh environments by definition involve exposure to danger. It’s a big reason why I can’t watch Alex Honnold in Free Solo without my palms starting to sweat, even when I know I’m safely planted on a couch and not on a portaledge suspended thousands of feet in the air.
I’ve personally found myself in situations that make my friends (those who are willing to say something at least) go “but isn’t that risky?” Exhibit A below: being at the the top of knife edge ridge with a 3k ft drop on either side, during an unexpected snowy whiteout (in July!), and in rock shoes that are not happy in snow. Yikes...
(Left: A memorable experience in a snowy July whiteout; Right: The long way down that was hidden behind clouds, thanks RMI Guides for the Photo)
To me the OED definition of is missing something — risk is risky if
- it’s consequential & unmitigated
- OR if it’s unknown
In other words, I know I’m in unchartered (& potentially scary) waters if there are a) serious lurking risks unknown to me b) risks I do know about but either haven’t done anything about, haven’t created a Plan B for, or am not sure I can execute on Plan B. Sounds great, but it’s made way more complicated by cognitive traps (i.e. overconfidence, incorrectly estimating small probability events, generally thinking risk can be completely managed, etc).
So is the case of a mid-climb, unexpected July snowy whiteout risky? Scary, yeah… risky, a bit more debatable.
Managing Risk, with the Help of a Basic Alpine Climbing Framework
But what about that huge decision to enter a new market, build a new feature, or overhaul branding? How do we make sure we’re doing the right thing and therefore spare ourselves of emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical heartache? (not to mention a ton of wasted time, effort, and money)
After all the work that goes into making decisions, a simple sanity check goes a long way to minimizing the chance of completely going off the rails. Ultimately I want to avoid missing or not validating key assumptions, and I’ve found listing risks through the lens of an alpine climbing risk framework helpful in doing so:
- Objective hazards: things out of our control — think rocks falling down a chute, avalanches wiping out everything in their path, crevasses swallowing buildings whole, lightning doing it’s thing, etc.
- Subjective hazards: things well within in our control: think personal fitness to be able to safely ascend a mountain, technical ability to problem solve the rock/snow/ice obstacles on route, team dynamics to work effectively together, etc.
How does this apply to product decisions? Replace crevasses with changing customer preferences and technical ability with focusing on the right unmet customer need to maximize the likelihood of product-market fit…
As a side note, after a few summit bids and product launches that have come up short, I’ve learned the hard way to focus on team dynamics to allow people to do their best work within a product team (rope team) and execute (climb safely)! Maybe a topic for a different day though…
Where this Framework is Most Useful — Avoiding the Crevasses & Other Objective Hazards We’re Naturally Less Conscious Of
I’ve never explicitly labeled this as a climbing framework with my product team for risk of getting laughed out of the room, but rest assured it’s been put to work :).
This framework is most helpful in highlighting the objective hazards — the things out of our control that we can torpedo or otherwise great plan. Why? We often focus on the assumptions within our control, the subjective hazards, because they’re the meat of our effort and where we spend our mental energy. For example
- are we actually focusing on a real need for customers?
- is our solution 10x better than competitors in solving this need?
- do we have the right DNA on the team to execute on this plan?
Aren’t those fun to think about?
By carving out attention to focus on the things out of our control — the objective hazards — we can be slightly more exhaustive in our risk planning to uncover a key risk theme. For example
- do we believe the competitive landscape will change by the time we develop this feature?
- are customer preferences changing to the point they won’t want to use this feature?
- are we beholden to underlying platforms that threaten our plan?
Aren’t those less fun to think about?
Putting it Together
After more exhaustively identifying the risks, I’ve found that our product team (or rope team) can then figure out which ones we should really pay attention to. From there, mitigation strategies flow naturally and the real work begins, which explains why climbers walk around with backpacks full of sand and voluntarily throw themselves in crevasses only to pull themselves out — all in the pursuit of maximizing the likelihood of having a having a good, safe time in the mountains (…or successful product launch).
